Upsets, Oh My!

[Grim Tuesday]

Most of the time when this sort of thing (low seeds winning) happens, people immediately start crying about the seeding system.

I think it is quite the opposite.

The seeding system is quite good this year, it is simply that almost overnight, many regionals have gotten much deeper. Deeper by virtue that teams seeded 8th through 16th actually have a chance at winning the event. Where in many years, the first second and third seed are orders of magnitude better than "the pack" in the 20th seed and beyond, this year they are only slightly better.

I think a major factor of this change is Robot in 3 Days. It showed teams who might have made mediocre robots an easy way to make a simple and good robot. We can discuss if this is a good change (competition up, innovation down) but I think it was a major factor. It certainly made the events more fun to watch.

[Yipyapper]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

Most of the time when this sort of thing (low seeds winning) happens, people immediately start crying about the seeding system.

I think it is quite the opposite.

The seeding system is quite good this year, it is simply that almost overnight, many regionals have gotten much deeper. Deeper by virtue that teams seeded 8th through 16th actually have a chance at winning the event. Where in many years, the first second and third seed are orders of magnitude better than "the pack" in the 20th seed and beyond, this year they are only slightly better.

I think a major factor of this change is Robot in 3 Days. It showed teams who might have made mediocre robots an easy way to make a simple and good robot. We can discuss if this is a good change (competition up, innovation down) but I think it was a major factor. It certainly made the events more fun to watch.

Well, a big reason why people complained about it last year was because of the coopertition points. Not having the points in control when you're an elite team leads to a lot of them ending up as a little lower on the seeding scale. That's why this year, low seeds winning seems like a much bigger accomplishment.

To touch on what you said, I find it extremely admirable that teams are able to adapt to a regional so well in a couple days of an event, what with adjusting their robot from a 20th seed skill level to a top 5 seed skill level. That level of adaptability coagulates into a nice, interesting matchup when they get to the plate and win. The regionals get much more interesting, the low seeded teams' despair over a low seed vanishes (and feels amazing at the same time; before our regional chairman's win this year, 781's 8th seed upset was the best moment of my FIRST career, passing even our world final appearance in 2011) and the higher seeds--most of which are elite teams winning at multiple regionals--get to put their skills to the test and actually enjoy a hard fought, fun match where losing is almost as entertaining as winning.

[flippy147852]

Michigan seems to be somewhat immune to this trend so far:

Week 1
-Traverse City: 1 defeats 3
-Kettering: 1 defeats 3

Week 2
-Gull Lake: 1 defeats 2
-Waterford: 1 defeats 6

So far, the #1 seed is 4/4. #2 fares far worse, making it to the finals only once so far.

[Allison K]

Originally Posted by flippy147852

Michigan seems to be somewhat immune to this trend so far:

Week 1
-Traverse City: 1 defeats 3
-Kettering: 1 defeats 3

Week 2
-Gull Lake: 1 defeats 2
-Waterford: 1 defeats 6

So far, the #1 seed is 4/4. #2 fares far worse, making it to the finals only once so far.

Perhaps our rankings are more representative as every team gets 12 qualifying matches at districts as opposed to the 8-9 that teams are getting at regionals. I haven't the time to run numbers at the moment, but more accurate seeding could be a contributing factor around here.

[Hebrew]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

I think a major factor of this change is Robot in 3 Days. It showed teams who might have made mediocre robots an easy way to make a simple and good robot. We can discuss if this is a good change (competition up, innovation down) but I think it was a major factor. It certainly made the events more fun to watch.

Yeah, Ri3D was what gave us our shooter. They helped us, 4228, a lot since our budget does not allow for much prototyping. Our shooter was one of the more successful ones through the first two days of competition racking up a lot of points for us...it is a shame that one of the tires popped without us noticing until it was too late on day 3 -.- (Too late meaning after we lost our Qual match by 9 pts and our shooter had only about 30% accuracy that match)

Overall, I think Ri3D had a positive impact on a lot of teams in FIRST, innovation did not go down because of it, most teams that I saw used an aspect from Ri3D and put it on their robot...but not all of it.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Orlando reporting in — I honestly have no idea how our 8th seed alliance formed. We got into the scouting meeting and realized all three of us were solid shooters with 10 point hangs. Set strategy to be an offensive strategy (79 bouncing between harassment and scoring but focus on scoring) and ran that through.

79 hasn't won a regional since 2009 (hasn't won Orlando since 2006), 744 and 1772 had never won a regional. I understand my own team, but how 744 and 1772 have never won is beyond me. They were solid teams and were a genuine pleasure to work with.

Edit: I've been asked to also draw attention to the fact that not a single one of our teams was in the top 10. Our 8th seeded alliance was made up of a 13, 15 and 19 seed.